Dividing Droplets Could Explain Life’s Origin - Researchers have discovered that simple “chemically active” droplets grow to the size of cells and spontaneously divide, suggesting they might have evolved into the first living cells.

A very important concept in the search for where life came from.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170119-active-droplets-cell-division/

In 1924, Alexander Oparin, the Russian biochemist who first envisioned a hot, briny primordial soup as the source of lifes humble beginnings, proposed that the mystery protocells might have been liquid droplets naturally forming, membrane-free containers that concentrate chemicals and thereby foster reactions. In recent years, droplets have been found to perform a range of essential functions inside modern cells, reviving Oparins long-forgotten speculation about their role in evolutionary history. But neither he nor anyone else could explain how droplets might have proliferated, growing and dividing and, in the process, evolving into the first cells.

I think it's very possible that those 'droplets' had protein/membrane precursors...which concentrated chemicals. Those protein/membrane precursors form 'containers'.

 

This is an interesting paper concerning the origin of DNA.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/

Edited March 15, 20178 yr by Itoero